Psalm 119:63

 NOTE
I was asked to preach a sermon on May 17, 2026, based on one of the six “Covenant Affirmations” used in the Evangelical Covenant Church. The context was the Sunday morning chapel service at Covenant Living of Florida. In this retirement community, I served as a chaplain before I retired in 2022, and Cheryl and I became residents.

PRAYER
Your word, O Lord, is a flashlight that guides us along dark and cracked walkways. Speak to us again so that our steps leaving here this morning are firmer and steadier than when we entered. We expect that your Holy Spirit will make us stronger and better equipped to face the world in which you have graciously placed us. Amen.

SERMON
My text this morning is short, Psalm 119:63. We already read my paraphrase of it at the beginning of the service. “I’m a friend and companion of all who respect and honor you, of those committed to living your way.”

I’ve been asked to talk about one of six affirmations, or I prefer to say emphases, that characterize the Evangelical Covenant Church — the church body behind Covenant Living — also the church in which I was born and raised.

I say emphases because not one of these six affirmations that form the basis of these sermons is unique to the Evangelical Covenant Church. What is distinctive is how we emphasize and prioritize them.

For those who don’t know me well. Before I retired, and Cheryl and I moved into C114, I was a Covenant Living chaplain on the best Covenant Living campus, a Covenant pastor, a Covenant missionary, and a college and seminary professor. 

For many years, I also taught classes in the Covenant orientation program — that is, I did orientation training for ministers coming from other denominations into the Covenant. So I'm a bit more familiar with these concepts than many, and that's dangerous. I'm going to do my best not to turn this into a seminary lecture.

I mean, it is helpful to talk about these things if we’re going to better understand what makes Covenant Living tick — which is the point. But, again, my goal is that this wouldn’t be so much a lecture on Covenant thinking as it would be a sermon to encourage your faith, while introducing one of the things that characterizes our particular expression of the Christian faith. And this is where Psalm 119:63 comes in.

I chose this passage because it was the basis of an important sermon preached by a young Swedish immigrant pastor, F.M. Johnson, during the founding meeting of the Evangelical Covenant Church on February 20, 1885.

I was not there. But when I was ordained at the Covenant's annual meeting in 1985, there was a lot of hoopla about what had occurred 100 years earlier. And that 19th-century sermon on Psalm 119:63 became a part of the Covenant's DNA, specifically, the affirmation that I've been assigned to talk about.

You remember that two weeks ago, Chaplain Corrie explained AFFIRMATION #1 — the centrality of the Word of God — the Bible, and an historical question that early Covenant people asked — “Where is it written?”

Today, that might better be rendered, “How would you make a biblical case for what you’re saying?” It's not an invitation to prooftext everything but an invitation to look at the broad biblical picture as a foundation for what you believe and how you live.

Then last Sunday, Dr Cindy Hoover, an ordained physician who served as a Covenant missionary in Mexico, talked about AFFIRMATION #2, the necessity of new birth. By the way, if you don’t yet know Cindy personally, she is kinda famous in Covenant circles because of her unique ministry, and she lives in our building #2.

That brings us to my assignment, to talk about how Covenant churches emphasize that the church is a fellowship of believers. And I reference Pastor Johnson’s 1885 sermon because it captured the "Mission Friend" spirit of the Swedish immigrants who founded the Covenant church. (By the way, that’s what they called themselves, “Mission Friends.”)

His sermon was so well received because it spelled out three main pillars in this emphasis on the church as a fellowship of believers — an emphasis that characterized the Mission Friends renewal movement, which God was using to rock Scandinavia and the newly arrived Swedish immigrant communities in the US and Canada.

The first thing to see in Psalm 119:63 is that it anticipates relational unity. I’m a friend and companion…

How do you know if someone is a part of the church? Well, they are friends of God, companions who hang out with him.

The Swedish immigrants who started the Covenant had lived in the old country under a sometimes harsh state-sponsored Lutheran church that regulated who was in and who was out, based on some tightly woven system of theology. 

You might have a vibrant faith and deep commitment to following Jesus, but if you didn't toe the line on doctrinal minutia or organizational uniformity, you were out. Or sometimes even in — that is IN jail. 

These mission friends knew firsthand how entangling church and state leads to the spiritual decline of the church. Yes, there are benefits to getting in bed with the government — preferential positioning for your religious views and agendas, influence, and a wealthy patron to build and maintain beautiful cathedrals. But at what cost?

The government, at the request of a spiritless church hierarchy, was involved in trying to squelch the wave of Pietistic renewal that was flowing throughout Scandinavia in the 19th century.  So when these renewed believers landed in America, they started to form new Lutheran bodies, joyfully without government oversight — churches that would be less rigid, more faith-filled. 

But it didn’t take long in this new environment to realize that not all genuine believers were Lutherans. Again, remember their context.

So in 1885, two of these Swedish immigrant church bodies, the Ansgar Lutheran Synod and the Mission Lutheran Synod, effectively dissolved themselves in order to reorganize as a more inclusive body — the Covenant Church.

Here’s the thing — they still saw the theological world through a Lutheran lens, but they didn't think the Lutheran symbols (Augsburg Confession, Book of Concord), as wonderful and helpful as they are, are a solid basis for Christian fellowship. Fellowship needs to be more relational than formula-driven.

They saw the church as a unity of ALL who are friends and companions of God through Christ. 

And over the years, it became clear that the Covenant saw itself as big enough to include believers with Baptist ideas, Presbyterian and Methodist, Anglican, Campbelite, Pentecostals, Charismatics, Independent, Lutheran, Bible Church and Plymouth Brethren, Quakers, Mennonites — perhaps a few renegade Orthodox and Catholic believers — AND maybe even, eventually Norwegians, Danes, Fins, and other non-Swedes. (Sorry, my attempt at Nordic humor.)

Concurrently, in the old country, a Swedish version of the Covenant Church took shape, breaking free from state oversight, and actually became the second largest church body in Sweden. Their inclusive evangelical approach eventually led to a merger with the United Methodists and the Swedish Baptist Union in 2011 to form Equmeniakyrkan, which in English means the Uniting Church. The mission friends’ approach to being a broad believers church has at times been contagious.

I’m a friend and companion of all who respect and honor you.

In the US, the Covenant people never saw themselves becoming a major player in the religious landscape, but they'd be a big tent welcoming God's faithful friends — even if it meant learning to live and work with believers who didn't always read the Bible in the same way or baptize people in the same way. 

Our relationship in Christ causes us to define ourselves by our friendship with Christ rather than our differences.

And that's one of the reasons that people from so many backgrounds can worship together in chapel here at Covenant Living of Florida. You don't have to give up your Lutheran theology, or your Baptist understanding, or your Reformed Presbyterian emphases, or your Methodist, Charismatic, Disciples of Christ backgrounds to be welcomed and included.

Or maybe you, like many, grew up as a church mutt — a little of this, a little of that. Actually, to find a home in the Covenant Church, you don’t even have to have a faith background. It is enough to have a current relationship with Christ as your saving friend. That's all that is necessary for inclusion in a congregation.

But it also means that we expect everyone to treat others as brothers and sisters in Christ. We don’t just tolerate — but we aim to support each other, even when we don't see eye to eye on theological minutia or some forms of Christian practice.

Secondly, our Psalm 119:63 passage anticipates a Believer’s church where people take God seriously.

The psalmist says, “I’m a friend and companion of all who respect and honor you…” The “you” being addressed here is God himself.

When the early Mission Friends were in Sweden, they had to put up with life in a state-run church that didn't care so much about any real expressions of faith. If you had been properly baptized and showed up to take communion at the assigned times, it didn't matter how you actually lived. You could be a nasty, foul-mouthed, lying, cheat, and still be in good standing — perhaps even an esteemed member of the clergy.

Fellowship, back then, wasn't based on new life in Christ but on your willingness to support the institution and its rules. 

However, as the Mission Friends studied scripture, they began to understand that the church is less an institution and more a fellowship of believers — people who have a relationship with Christ. 

Not that church and institution are antithetical — to the contrary, there is a place for institutions. (Without institutional structure, ministries like Covenant Living couldn't exist with integrity.) But again, it’s a matter of primary emphasis. Church life is built around vibrant, faithful relationships among believers rather than institutional rules and objectives — even though institutions are important.

In some ways, this idea is actually more Lutheran than the established Lutheranism that the Mission Friends had pushed against.

In Martin Luther’s 1526 publication The German Mass and Order of Service, he advocated for churches of “earnest believers” meeting in homes to pray, read scripture, baptize, receive holy communion, and engage in "other Christian works."

One of the reasons I like churches gathering around tables, such as we do here in the Village Center, is that it emphasizes this communal aspect of the church. 

What we have here in the Village Center isn't my doing, but at times we did some similar Sunday morning settings at the Covenant Church I pastored in Phoenix. Believers gathered around tables is very relational, biblical, and also very aligned with the vision of Martin Luther.

Then, the third way that our Psalm 119 passage anticipates a Believer’s church is by emphasizing a changed life — a life changed by Christ as we believe in him.

I’m a friend and companion of all who respect and honor you, of those committed to living your way.

That is, we are kindred spirits with all who are committed to living God-honoring lives in his way. 

Some of the older translations render our verse, “I am a companion of all them that fear thee, and of them that keep thy precepts.”

​In this context, "fear" did not mean terror, but a profound awe and reverence for God that led to a changed life. The church includes all committed to an active and personal living faith ("keeping thy precepts").

This was the faithful genius of Pastor Johnson's 1885 sermon. Instead of focusing on what divided different church factions at the time, Johnson focused on the common bond of new life in Christ. To be a "companion" meant walking together on a spiritual journey. Life together.

When 19th-century Swedish Mission Friends met each other on the street, instead of saying, “Hey, what's up?” or “How's it going?” — they greeted each other with the question lever du? 

Anyone want to take a stab at translating that from Swedish?

It means “Are you living?” Short hand for, how goes your life in Christ? Is your faith alive, active, and growing?

Back then, being a "Christian" was often seen as a matter of birthright or legal status — because everyone was born into the state-sponsored Lutheran Church of Sweden. 

The Mission Friends believed that faith should be a living, personal experience rather than just a formal doctrinal or social requirement. They were more interested in the life of the believer than someone's ability to recite a confession of faith — although, when I was in junior high school, I still had to memorize a bunch of catechism and the Apostles Creed during our Covenant confirmation studies. They didn't let me argue that those kinds of things were totally irrelevant — as a junior higher who thought he knew more than he did,  might be inclined to do.

Yes, creeds and confessions are important, but they are useless apart from a living personal relationship with Christ. So that became the first priority and the basis of fellowship in the church. And if that’s in place, then you have the relational context or framework where you can work out the doctrinal stuff over time.

As I said earlier, it's a matter of emphasis and priority.

So, I want to ask you this morning, 

Lever du? Are you living? How goes your life with Christ?

These sermons on the Covenant Affirmations are not just an introduction to the church that birthed and continues to oversee Covenant Living, but an invitation to embrace what we consider to be of primary importance — to focus on turning to and together living out the new life in Christ that was inaugurated on that first Easter morning, after he had trampled sin, death, and divisiveness.

You know that we live in divisive times. But our calling is to become a counter-divisive voice — a collective witness to the transcending and unifying companionship we have in Christ. So we declare with the psalmist, “I’m a friend and companion of all who respect and honor you, of those committed to living your way.”

And that, believe it or not, is the good news.